Patent Infringement News

April 17, 2014 - After almost five years of litigation, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Fractus SA told a federal court that they have settled their patent lawsuit. Fractus sued Samsung in 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, claiming that Samsung infringed four of its patents on cellphone antennas. Samsung was eventually ordered to pay $38 million, after which Fractus claimed Sansung continued to infringe.

April 11, 2014 - Varian Medical Systems Inc. agreed to pay the University of Pittsburgh ("Pitt") $35 million as part of an agreement to settle their patent litigation. Pitt sued Varian in 2007 for infringement of a patent on real-time position management technology, which Varian used in radiation therapy equipment.

April 10, 2014 - TouchTunes Interactive Networks, which was sued by Arachnid Inc. in 2007 for patent infringement, not only won its lawsuit but was granted "several million dollars" in attorneys' fees, according to a TouchTunes news release.

March 17, 2014 - Creative Technology Ltd. announced that its subsidiary ZiiLabs Inc., Ltd. filed suit against Apple and Samsung on March 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

March 12, 2014 - SanDisk Corporation announced that a Santa Clara County jury awarded SanDisk $28.5 million in damages for PNY's breach of its patent license agreement. The jury found that PNY had failed to pay SanDisk amounts owed for the right to license SanDisk's intellectual property.

March 10, 2014 - A patent lawsuit accusing Bank of America (BofA) of infringing patents related to online billing has been dismissed by a U.S. District judge in North Carolina because plaintiff Intellectual Ventures (IV) did not include any facts to back up its claim that BofA knew that visitors to its website would be infringing IV's patents. IV originally filed suit against BofA and a handful of other banks in June 2013.

March 7, 2014 - Juniper Networks filed a patent lawsuit against Palo Alto Networks, but a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware declared a mistrial in the suit when the jury failed to reach a verdict. The Court has not yet scheduled a new trial date for this matter, but the lawsuit - which was filed in December 2011 - is still pending.

February 26, 2014 - Yesterday a federal judge ruled that Kolon Industries Inc. must pay over $18 million in attorneys' fees to DuPont Co. in a case involving trade secrets that Kolon obtained illegally from former DuPont employees.

The Obama Administration is in the process of launching initiatives aimed at helping inventors who need legal help filing patents and/or defendants who have been targeted by patent assertion entities (PAEs), the latest term for what is commonly called a patent troll. PAEs are defined as businesses that center their business model on patent lawsuits and demand letters.

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